AustLit

'From award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum. Featuring an introduction from Nick Cave.

'I hadn't opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of Nina Simone's spirit would vanish. In many ways that thought was more important than the gum itself.

'On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year.

'Nina Simone's Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.'  (Publication summary)

'Explore some of the most thrilling cultural and religious festivals from around the world!

'From Diwali, the Indian festival of light, to the Spanish tomato-throwing festival La Tomatina, to the Belgian Festival of Giants, this book is the perfect introduction to some of the world's most incredible cultural and religious celebrations.'(Publication summary)

'Robert Hillman’s previous novel, The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted, captivated readers around the world.

'His new novel is also a story about unlikely love. World War II is over and Hiroshima lies in a heap of poisoned rubble when young Quaker Wesley Cunningham returns home to the village of Almond Tree. He served as a stretcher-bearer and has seen his fair share of horror. Now he intends to build beautiful houses and to marry, having fallen in love with his neighbour Beth Hardy.

'Beth has other plans. An ardent Communist, she is convinced that the Party and Stalin’s Soviet Union
hold the answers to all the world’s evils. She doesn’t believe in marriage; in any case, her devotion is to the cause.

'Beth’s ideals will exact a ruinously high price. But Wes will not stop loving her. This is the story of their journey through the catastrophic mid-twentieth century—from summer in Almond Tree to Moscow’s bitter winter and back again—to find a way of being together.

'The Bride of Almond Tree is a book of great loves and difficult choices.' (Publication summary)

'Dopamine City is the story of Lonny Cush, sanitation worker and single parent, kind-hearted and red-blooded, who is trying his best to protect his kids from the hysterical hyper-reality of 21st century life.

'He lives in an unnamed fictional world city, dominated by a huge tech company akin to Google. A manual worker - although he has been put forward for 'retraining', a euphemism for redundancy - Lonny is out of sync with the changes in his hometown and his century, and doesn't have the means to give his quiet teenage son Egan and his precocious, ultra-demanding nine-year-old daughter Shelby (one of the most memorably awful children in literature!) what they need, or say they need. But with his mother-in-law circling for custody, and needing to win back his kids' favour after he maybe went too far in discipling Shelby, he succumbs, splashing out on the thing Shelby wants more than anything else: her first smartphone.

'And so begins the silken silence as she drifts off to her room and down the rabbit hole of memes, trolls, hysteria and peer-pressure, and the true, vertiginous terrors of 21st-century life start flooding into the Cush household. And what should Lonny do? Rescue her or follow her? Because who is right: Lonny, or the world he and everybody else is living in now?' (Publication summary)

'Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

'Frank is a service station owner on a little-used highway who just wants a quiet life. His granddaughter has been sent to stay with him to fix her attitude, but they don't talk a lot.

'When a badly injured young woman arrives at Frank's service station with several cars in pursuit, Frank and a handful of unsuspecting customers are thrust into a life-or-death standoff.

'But who are this group of men and women who will go to any lengths for revenge? And what do they want? Other than no survivors ...?

'A ferociously fast-paced, filmic, visceral, tense and utterly electric novel, unlike anything you've read before. Set on a lonely, deserted highway, deep in the Australian badlands, The Hunted is white-knuckle suspense matched to the fast-paced adrenaline of a Jack Reacher novel and the creeping menace of Wake in Fright. This is unmissable reading.' (Publication summary) 

'- And your husband forgave you. But what did you do? Decided that forgiveness was offensive and walked out on your marriage. With nothing. Into nothing.

'- Into everything, I think.

'It's 1959. Robert leaves Ibsen's A Doll's House outraged by its attack on the sanctity of marriage; his wife Daisy dashes round to the stage door, in love with both Nora and the actress who plays her, thrilled by their promise of escape.

'Daisy is at the crossroads. Her moral compass tells her to go one way, society the other. What she chooses to do next will have consequences not just for her and Robert, but for four couples who come after them over ninety years.

'The truth is we have to give up parts of ourselves if we want to be with someone. And what if, before you know this, you run away from the wrong person?

'Samuel Adamson's Wife premiered at Kiln Theatre, London, in May 2019.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Tom Hope doesn’t think he’s much of a farmer, but he’s doing his best. He can’t have been much of a husband to Trudy, either, judging by her sudden departure. It’s only when she returns, pregnant to someone else, that he discovers his surprising talent as a father. So when Trudy finds Jesus and takes little Peter away with her to join the holy rollers, Tom’s heart breaks all over again.

'Enter Hannah Babel, quixotic smalltown bookseller: the second Jew—and the most vivid person—Tom has ever met. He dares to believe they could make each other happy.

'But it is 1968: twenty-four years since Hannah and her own little boy arrived at Auschwitz. Tom Hope is taking on a batttle with heartbreak he can barely even begin to imagine.' (Publication Summary)

'Timid Elizabeth and her unusual and fearless friend Zenobia arrive at Witheringe House, the old manor where Elizabeth's father and his beloved sister Tourmaline lived as children. Zenobia loves it – she's convinced it's haunted and is eager to make contact with a spirit presence. Elizabeth is relieved when her efforts seem to come to nothing.

'But strange things begin to happen at Witheringe House, especially in the East Wing, where Elizabeth and Zenobia have been forbidden to explore.

'Why do the flowers and vines on the wallpaper in the nursery seem to be alive? Could it have something to do with the strange book that tells a different story after midnight? And what really happened to Tourmaline all those years ago?

'Elizabeth and Zenobia is a wonderfully mysterious middle-grade adventure story about friendship and courage and the power of imagination.' (Publication summary)

'Caleb Zelic, profoundly deaf since early childhood, has always lived on the outside - watching, picking up telltale signs people hide in a smile, a cough, a kiss. When a childhood friend is murdered, a sense of guilt and a determination to prove his own innocence sends Caleb on a hunt for the killer. But he can’t do it alone. Caleb and his troubled friend Frankie, an ex-cop, start with one clue: Scott, the last word the murder victim texted to Caleb. But Scott is always one step ahead.

'This gripping, original and fast-paced crime thriller is set between a big city and a small coastal town, Resurrection Bay, where Caleb is forced to confront painful memories. Caleb is a memorable protagonist who refuses to let his deafness limit his opportunities, or his participation in the investigation. But does his persistence border on stubbornness? And at what cost? As he delves deeper into the investigation Caleb uncovers unwelcome truths about his murdered friend – and himself.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'1923

'Maria Vittoria is embroidering a sheet for her dowry trunk.

'Her father has gone to find her a husband. He’s taken his mule, a photograph and a pack of food: home-made sopressa sausage, cold polenta, a little flask of wine – no need to take water – the world is full of water.

'There are no eligible men in this valley or the next one, and her father will not let her marry just anyone, and now, despite Maria’s years, she is still healthy. Her betrothed will see all that. He’ll be looking for a woman who can do the work.

'Maria can do the work. Everyone in the contrà says that.

'And the Lord knows Maria will need to be able to work. Fascism blooms as crops ripen, the state craves babies just as the babies cry for food. Maria faces a stony path, but one she will surely climb to the summit.

'In this sumptuous and elegant novel you will taste the bigoli co l’arna, touch the mulberry leaves cut finer than organdie, and feel the strain of one woman attempting to keep her family safe in the most dangerous of times.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Anna is coming of age. Possibilities are unfurling in front of her and she’s ready to take control. But her mother’s been standing guard all these years, taking care, editing the choices.

'When Anna makes a decision that could affect the rest of her life, can Renee stand by and watch?'

Source: Royal Exchange Theatre.

'Community radio host Ciara receives dozens of unmarked cassette recordings every week and broadcasts them to a listenership of none. Ex-musician Tom drives an impractical bus that no one ever boards. Publican Jenny runs a hotel that has no patrons. Rick wanders the aisles of the Woolworths every day in an attempt to blunt the disappointment of adulthood.

'In a town of innumerable petrol stations, labyrinthine cul-de-sac streets, two competing shopping plazas, and ubiquitous drive-thru franchises, where are the townsfolk likely to find the truth about their collective past – and can they do so before the town disappears?

'Shaun Prescott’s debut novel The Town follows an unnamed narrator’s efforts to complete a book about disappeared towns in the Central West of New South Wales. Set in a yet-to-disappear town in the region—a town believed by its inhabitants to have no history at all—the novel traces its characters’ attempts to carve their own identities in a place that is both unyielding and teetering on the edge of oblivion.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The two-time Booker Prize-winning author now gives us a wildly exuberant, wily new novel that circumnavigates 1954 Australia, revealing as much about the country-continent as it does about three audacious individuals who take part in the infamous 10,000 mile race, the Redex Trial.

'Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in south eastern Australia. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. With them is their lanky fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed school teacher who calls the turns and creeks crossings on a map that will remove them, without warning, from the white Australia they all know so well. This is a thrilling high speed story that starts in one way, and then takes you some place else. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always a page-turner even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.' (Publication summary)

'Examining three lives - Julian Assange, Craig Wright, the Australian behind the Bitcoin inventor 'Satoshi Nakamoto', and Ronald Pinn, an online character O'Hagan created - he explores identity, secrecy, and the relationship between the individual, the state, and technology.

'The slippery online ecosystem is the perfect breeding ground for identities: true, false, and in between. We no longer question the reality of online experiences but the reality of selfhood in the digital age.

'In The Secret Life: Three True Stories, Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and the 'real world'.

'Ghosting' introduces us to the beguiling and divisive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography the author agrees to ghostwrite with unforeseen-and unforgettable-consequences.

'The Invention of Ronnie Pinn' finds the author using the actual identity of a deceased young man to construct an entirely new one in cyberspace, leading him on a journey into the deep web's darkest realms.

'And 'The Satoshi Affair' chronicles the strange case of Craig Wright, the Australian web developer who may or may not be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, and who may or may not be willing, or even able, to reveal the truth.

'What does it mean when your very sense of self becomes, to borrow a phrase from the tech world, 'disrupted'? Perhaps it takes a novelist, an inventor of selves, armed with the tools of a trenchant reporter, to find an answer. ' (Publication Summary)

'Nick Alston, a Los Angeles private investigator, is hired to find the kidnapped son of America's richest and most hated man. Hastings, a mob hitman in search of redemption, is also on the trail. But both men soon become ensnared by a sinister cabal that spreads from the White House all the way to Dealey Plaza. Decades later in Dallas, Alston's son stumbles across evidence from JFK conspiracy buffs that just might link his father to the shot heard round the world.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Booker Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little returns with a book about fiction.

'When DBC Pierre burst onto the scene in 2003, he arrived with no particular literary education. Finding he had something to say, he made the journey solo to that place where dreams and demons live, to try and turn feelings into words.

'Part biography, part reflection and part practical guide, Release the Bats explores the mysteries of why and how we tell stories, and the craft of writing fiction. DBC Pierre reveals everything he learned the hard way.' (Publication summary)

'The darkest, most gripping novel yet from the acclaimed author of The Exit.

''So far, twenty-three thousand and ninety six people have seen me online. They include my mother, my father, my little sister, my grandmother, my other grandmother, my grandfather, my boss, my sixth year Biology teacher and my boyfriend James.'

'When Leah Oliphant-Brotheridge and her adopted sister Su go on holiday together to Magaluf to celebrate their A-levels, only Leah returns home. Her successful, swotty sister remains abroad, humiliated and afraid: there is an online video of her, drunkenly performing a sex act in a nightclub. And everyone has seen it. Ruth Oliphant-Brotheridge, mother of the girls, successful court judge, is furious. How could this have happened? How can she bring justice to these men who took advantage of her dutiful, virginal daughter? What role has Leah played in all this? And can Ruth find Su and bring her back home when Su doesn't want to be found?' (Publication summary)

'In this brave and lucid account, Julia Leigh broaches a challenging life event often left undiscussed: how the struggle to have a child can take an agonizing toll. Leigh’s experience at the vanguard of medical science is acutely rendered, physically and emotionally, transmitting what it feels like to so desperately wish for a child while knowing that the odds are stacked against you. From the daily shots she puts herself through at home, to hopes raised and dashed, and finally to the decision to stop treatment, Avalanche bears witness to Leigh’s raw desire, suffering, strength, and, in the end, transformation―a shift to a different kind of love. The reader looks behind the scenes of a clinic and discovers how things really work: reality is a far cry from the slick marketing of the billion-dollar infertility industry. As for so many women, Leigh’s treatment failed, but her ghost child lingers in memory.' (Publication summary)

'In this provocative and haunting collection of short stories, edited by two masters of the form, a diverse group of contemporary writers probes the nature and connection between two of the most powerful, exhilarating, and terrifying forces that define and shape the human experience.

'“What else is there?”—Alice Munro, on why so much of her work deals with the twin themes of sex and death.' (Publication summary)

'Some people love goodbyes...

'23-year-old Catherine is mainly interested in Facebook and flirting, but she reluctantly takes a job at a local care home after her mother puts her foot down - and soon discovers that her new workplace contains many secrets.

'One of the residents at the home, 82-year-old Rose, is convinced that something sinister is going on in Room 7 and that her own life is under threat. But Rose has dementia - so what does she actually know, and who would believe her anyway?

'As Catherine starts investigating Rose's allegations, terrible revelations surface about everyone involved. Can Catherine find out what's really going on before it's too late?' (Publication summary)